DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – More children who are residents of the city of Detroit attend charter schools than go to the city’s public school district.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District’s data showed that 42% of the city’s 115,500 K-12 school-aged children go to charter schools while 39.2% attend Detroit Public Schools Community District. There were 10.6% that were attending non-Detroit school districts, such as schools of choice, and 8.2% were homeschooled or in private schools.

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Detroit Public Schools Community District said that compared to eight years ago, the percentage of Detroit school children choosing their district has increased from 35.1% to 39.2%. The percentage of students choosing charter schools has stayed at 42% over that same time period.

The district said that when it asked families why they were leaving the district, 40.2% said it was due to academics. That was the top response given.

In 2016-17, the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s enrollment was 45,720. It increased to 50,875 in 2017-18. That jump was due to the end of the Education Achievement Authority. That was an experiment by the state to remove several poor-academic performing schools from under DPSCD review and put them in a newly created district, which was the EAA.

When the EAA experiment was ended in 2016, the 5,000 plus students from the EAA were put back into the DPSCD when their schools returned under the Detroit district’s umbrella.

That 50,875 enrollment when the students returned in 2017-18 has been the district’s peak enrollment. Currently, the district has 49,038 students enrolled.